6 | January 2014 Communiqué

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Village Buddha

A Deep Dive into Emerging India‘Village Buddha,’ a key component of the new

‘Champions for Societal Manufacturing’ project under

the India-Japan technical co-operation agreement, seeks

to leverage Industry’s competency, knowledge and

experience, to meet current societal challenges

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Indian industry has been demonstrating good growth and development over the last two decades. Today, Indian Manufacturing is poised to become a benchmark for others, by developing and adopting best practices for enhancing processes

and productivity. However, the prevailing scenario, with a difficult economic situation, global slowdown, and changing regulations, is calling on Industry to make breakthrough changes (10X) to sustain the growth momentum for the next few decades. Incremental change would not be adequate.

Reflecting from the past, we can learn for the way forward.

‘India lives in her 700,000 villages. The future of India lies in its villages; if the village perishes, India will perish too,’ said Mahatma Gandhi. The Prime Minister of India, too, has stated that any development that is not inclusive and sustainable is not development.

These thoughts set the direction. The need for operational efficiency to go up each year by 5% to 10% is now a given for our Manufacturing industry to remain somewhat competitive, but not enough for it to become a leader. A leader needs breakthrough.

At present, two dimensions of India co-exist together. On one side, we have Manufacturing companies becoming world class, competing with multinationals, more MNCs coming and setting up their factories in India, Government policy announcements to make Manufacturing a key driver of GDP, rising skill, productivity and efficiency levels…and, on the other side, we have a large section of our society, mostly living in villages, with huge aspirations but unfulfilled and unmet needs. They seem to have been left behind in the developmental race. Is there some opportunity here? Can we take the wisdom of manufacturing excellence to our millions of villages?

A large number of companies are already contributing back to society by creating infrastructure for drinking water, sanitation, waste management, proving basic education and awareness for self-employment, generating awareness about energy and environment conservation, and more. With the current mandate under the new Company Bill, compulsory spending under Corporate

Social Responsibility, widely known as CSR, will surely expedite these activities.

However, what is needed is a transformation in the way Industry can engage with villages to transform its own approach for engaging with society. Such a transformation will enable Rural India and Industry to build a win-win relationship by growing together. This seems to be the right way, by bringing society and Industry closer, to utilize current Manufacturing competency, knowledge and experience to meet current societal challenges.

Today’s challenges and the unstated, unfulfilled needs of society could become the business opportunities of tomorrow. While the world is looking at India as an emerging market for the future, India can look to its villages for future growth.

This sets the context and a perfect platform for ‘Village Buddha,’ a key component of the new ‘Champions for Societal Manufacturing (CSM)’ project under the India-Japan technical co-operation agreement.

Manufacturing companies are doing several thousands of improvisation projects and generating millions of kaizens in the workplace. This project aims to diffuse the impact of such improvements and

breakthrough to a larger section of the population through a systematic approach.

As the ‘Village Buddha’ project is evolving, Prof Shoji Shiba, Chief Advisor, Champions for Societal Manufacturing Initiative, accompanied a CII team to observe the activities being undertaken as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in the villages surrounding Kirloskar Brothers Ltd at Kirloskarwadi, and Godrej Industries Ltd (Appliance Division) and Lawkim Motors at Shirwal, in Maharashtra, in November 2013.

The Visionary Leaders for Manufacturing (VLFM) Programme, which was initiated in 2007, has developed more than 1000 visionary leaders who are not just driving growth, but have become engines of growth in their organizations. More than 300 companies have benefitted from this programme and are reaping the benefits; 26 Intellectual Properties with 200 success stories, captured in the form of a success story book, manuals, and case studies are exemplifying this success.

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Village Buddha ModelA New Relationship between Society and Business

Business Organisation is a part of Society

Society is a part of Business Operation

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The interest in the book, ‘7 Dreams to Reality’ published by Penguin, has encouraged the team to work towards realizing more such dreams.

How do we realize these dreams? It is so simple. Prof Shoji Shiba simply says, “Jump into the fishbowl!’ He explains, “Instead of standing on the shore, with our hand folded and watching others do something for the village, if we jump into the village fishbowl and use simple observation, and simple understanding, for a simple improvement project, it will make an immense impact to the rural people and to the village.”

Village Buddha extends the simple fishbowl principle, the practice of observation skills and application of simple improvement (kaizen) methods learned in the Manufacturing plants of Industry, to daily village life.

The village visit helped to establish three important aspects about rural India:

• There are very poor villages, semi-urban villagesand almost becoming town villages.

• Thesemi-urbanvillagesarechangingvery fastandcatching up.

• Theaspirationsofthepeople,especiallythechildren,in these villages, are like those of city-dwellers.

Many rural people want to continue to live in villages, and make their villages and their lives better, by improving their earning and spending capacity.

Rural entrepreneurs are doing jobs like milk collection and testing, promoting tourism, etc.

Industry’s contribution in the traditional villages is generally by funding the setting up of toilets, water purification systems in schools, etc, through their CSR endeavors. In the semi-urban village set ups, which are connected to nearby industries, people are coming back

to their villages to contribute to development.

Village Buddha envisages the creation of teaching infrastructure to make the process of CSR more effective, and its activities more focused. The mission is to help Indian industry channelize its practices, processes, learnings and experiences to better connect with village India, to understand their concerns, and realize their dreams.

While this village visit has opened our eyes, there is still plenty more to learn and explore across our vast country. Learning visits to villages around Gurgaon in January and in Tamil Nadu in February, with support from local industry, have been lined up. This will help evolve and develop the model for engagement through practice and implementation with the participating companies.

The uniqueness of the Village Buddha project is its aim to create an ecosystem for all the stakeholders to develop capability by deep exploration and research. Currently, many companies are doing great work for the villages

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with support from volunteers from within and outside the company. In the first phase of Village Buddha, the pilot will focus on training these volunteers by improving the concepts and process of activities of Kaizen in the villages. This will create a standard process for village development, a diffusion strategy for implementation of this standard process, to be followed by up-gradation and scaling up. As it is rolled out, more and more companies, with the mission of an inclusive agenda, are welcome and encouraged to become part of this national movement created by CII.

Subsequently, in the next phase, the programme will focus on supporting companies' village businesses, and creating new business opportunities for emerging markets. Though the idea is still in the infancy stage and is open to suggestions and discussion, the models would be demonstrated through pilots. CII would build up capacity to support and grow these activities over the next couple of years.

Real Change Agents in Action

“In just 10 rupees a woman can go through her entire pregnancy and deliver a baby here, ” exclaimed the lady doctor in charge of a rural public health centre in Mahrashtra that the CII team visited.

“What’s more, we provide free ambulance services, food, stay, and, of course, lots of care and love to them. As much as 95% of the deliveries of babies are now done in this rural centre!” she said, beaming with pride.

It was very inspiring to see the Government’s ‘National Rural Health Mission’ initiative being realized, taking shape, and creating an impact on the ground.

The doctor continued, “Though I am qualified to take a better paying job in a private hospital in a city, I chose to work here, and will continue to do so.”

Shaping the Future: Matching the Aspirations

What is your dream?

“I want to become a great scientist like Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.

I want to become a doctor.

I want to become an engineer….”

These are not the ambitions of children from well-off urban backgrounds, but the dreams of 8-12 year- old children in a Government school in rural Maharashtra. Though physically miles away from big cities like Mumbai or Pune, their aspirations closely match those of their more privileged counterparts.

During our visit to the dozens of villages surrounding Kirloskarwadi and Shirwal in Maharashtra, we heard kids in different schools echo a similar tune.

“I watch Chhota Bheem on TV when I go back home from school.

I have gone to Pune many times.

I have gone to Mumbai with my father.”

What is happening here! Our imagination and perception of villages, village life and villagers is shattered. They are the same, just like any one in the city. The aspirations of people in India’s villages are by no means different from those of any others…